Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Zika and Dengue and ditches oh my.

Mom Jones has an interview discussing Zika vaccine, and how to prevent from getting it until the vaccine is available.

We've had now 500 or so travel-related cases. We've had no local transmission. It is likely that we will have restricted local transmission—small local outbreaks? My call would be that we will. Because we've had dengue and chikungunya, which are in the same regions of South and Central America and the Caribbean, and are transmitted by exactly the same mosquito....

Having said that, the dengue and chikungunya outbreaks were well controlled by aggressive mosquito control and attention to using insect repellent, staying indoors with air conditioning, making sure you have screens in your house, and eliminating standing water in those areas. That successfully prevented dengue and chikungunya from becoming sustained and disseminated. So, I never say never, but I do not think we're going to have a widespread Zika outbreak in this country.

yes, I use all of these (mosquitoes love me).

But that doesn't help the poor...for that you need honest government that actually uses designated funds to improve the city.

we are in the midst of a long term Dengue outbreak. (and chikungunya fever, which like the milder cases of Dengue fever often is not diagnosed because poor people only see doctors when they are really really sick). They even started giving out a partially tested Dengue vaccine to see if it helps.

so far, we haven't seen the bug sprayers around, and there is lots of standing water in the open sewer ditches until the monsoon comes around.

But it was election year, meaning the mayor decides to clean things up to show "doctora cares"....presumably she hasn't cared for the last few years about such things, but hey, anything to get a vote (didn't work....she lost).

So near our house, they are making the ditches wider and covering them...the last typhoon related floods partially destroyed the ground floor of the Palenke which had been built by the mayor's family after an "accidental" fire destroyed the old one...so now we have a huge ditch...but no openings for water to enter into the ditch, so WTF?

The ground water level is only a few feet down, so often the workers have to stand in muddy water to dig, and then pour concrete, but they did use a back hoe this time...twice, since they dug it in the wrong place across the street and had to redig it five feet away, to avoid private property.

We usually give them a hundred pesos to buy snacks for their afternoon break.

since we just elected a new mayor... and will wait to see if he can do the job.